


The Tools and the Time

by ParadifeLoft



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, War of Wrath, post-Noldorin rebellion Valinor politics-ing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-23
Updated: 2013-05-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 19:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/690498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadifeLoft/pseuds/ParadifeLoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remaining in Aman in a distinct break from much of her family and people, Curufin's wife notices immediately the opportunities provided her in the chaotic days following the flight of the Noldor - but allies will likely be necessary to take advantage of them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as a joke ship and then it kind of... wasn't. I don't know what happened. "Ahtarmë Hyellindë" is the name I've given to the quasi-OC I have in my headcanon as the wife Curufin must have had despite her lack of any real mention in the text. She is a Noldorin noblewoman with, ah, little enough love for the younger sons of Finwë and their families, or for the Valar and those associated with them. Among other things that are probably less relevant at this point in time.

"Lady Ahtarmë," said Amarië, with a slight incline of her head. Her voice sounded like light poise and grace in the manner that her movements looked, though it had a thinness to it that Hyellindë could not quite recall to the same extent from their past meetings. So polite and distant, though. Some others who had come to claim a kinship with her had not thought to keep the use of her ataressë so long. But then, she recalled with what would have been an amused quirk of her lips had she been alone, the other woman could not yet (like as not would not ever) call her family.

Amarië moved to sit upon the chair that she indicated for her, though Hyellindë remained standing herself. The mourning veil partially obscuring her golden hair, she took less amused notice of; it was a practise Hyellindë had heard of a substantial number of the Vanyar women adopting in the wake of recent events. Mourning still for the extinguished light of the Trees, no doubt; not for the mass exodus of many whom they would still call, sheathing superiority and disdain with pleasantry, their kinsmen. Hyellindë mourned for neither. She held her grief at the loss of her son, of much of her family, of her old way of life, certainly, but she would not _mourn_. The public had no need of any grief of hers. It was a thing not to be displayed, but to be buried beneath these halls she now called her own.

Amarië had been to the manor at Formenos once prior, but back then it had never been so empty. So ghostly silent. She was no more _welcome_ here, precisely, this time; though whatever it was that hung in the air between them, it was of a different sort from before.

"It is good to see you well," Hyellindë said, as she sat in her own chair, facing the Vanya woman, brushing away from her face a stray curl that was but a few shades too light to have matched in hue the jet inlaid in her bronze hairpiece. They would have matched, had it not been for the shine of the many lamps about the room. Lamps that had been lit almost constantly now.

There was no change in Amarië's unfailingly polite, mildly interested expression. "Unfortunate that you were.. left behind," Hyellindë continued, putting in the words a note of actual sorrow and empathy. ( _She_ , at least, could manage a certain subtlety and a lack of need to let in those around her on the humour with an obvious sharpness in her tone.)

A pleasant smile, at that. Though it wavered in the other woman's eyes. "And you've my own sympathy likewise, of course," Amarië replied, like the sound of a pure tone over a flowing stream unbroken by rocks peeking above the water.

Hyellindë's gaze flicked down, then back up to her eyes, head entirely still, and then she stretched her lips into a smile as well. "So gracious, and my thanks for it. Though _I_ have no need for sympathy."

She looked briefly confused, or startled. It might have caused Hyellindë's own smile to widen. Just a touch. "The lords would think to leave and carve out their own realms in some far-off land we'd once come from. But what they would leave, I intend to take, and improve upon. There is most of the House of Finwë, run off to Arda, and I remain of my own choice. I would have Tirion as my own."

More, if she could help it. But she was young. Virtually alone. She knew that, even before she had met and traded words with the Lady Anairë.

But it was a matter not unalterably unable to be overcome. The few of her own people, she had still. The Teleri were almost certainly closed to her, and even had they not been she would not have been able to best having the hand and thus allegiance of Princess Eärwen. But there were other options. And so she would see if she might find allies and leverage in places she would not have originally thought to look.

Amarië cocked her head slightly at the words, still with a slight smile. "I _am_ afraid there may be certain conflicts of interest there between yourself and Lord Arafinwë," she commented, words even, understated, precise.

It would be an engaging challenge.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Events conspire to bring Amarië to a conclusion she would prefer not to believe. Hyellindë would prefer she not believe it either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well look what I decided to follow up on!
> 
> I think this is probably a sign I've lost control of my life.

Though Amarië had always found improving one's physical circumstances to match the mood one desired when not feeling well, the change from stifling air of the city to the clear breeze of the open surrounding plains had done little this time to free her thoughts and emotions.

The repetitive motion of petting her horse as she led him to the tree to tether him was at least slightly soothing, she supposed. And gave her a place to look that was not straight at Hyellindë, already finishing with her own knot, now that Amarië found her words and courage skittering away just as she had intended to call upon them.

But when she returned from bending her head down over the rope, giving her horse one last pat, Hyellindë looked so calm, composed, utterly innocent and so very sure of herself. And that… it did not infuriate her. She was not truly sure if there were any emotions could definitively attach to the sight. But regardless, she found herself draining of nervousness and self-consciousness, filling in turn with a curious detachment for any consequences of her companion's actions.

Lies and twisting words could not be wrapped in silks and their shapes obscured forever, after all.

"You've been using me," she said finally, sliding the words back onto her tongue and pushing them out her lips. And then surely the flash of - worry? hurt? - in Hyellindë's eyes, just a fraction of a second, was imagined.

She was composed again in the tiny moment that Amarië took to glance away.

"I did not think I was doing any such thing," Hyellindë replied. Her voice was low, questioning, hinted sweet like the drizzle of honey cooked into the ham at the last feast. The doubts pressed once more against the top of Amarië's mouth. She would be made to explain herself, she knew. Now, if she had not known earlier. (She had.)

"And I do not think you sought out my companionship for it's own sake," she answered quietly, gaze to the side in the one allowance she would indulge herself in. "I spoke of you, and well of you, to my family, to others of my people with clout and influence and the ears of those powerful among your own court… Well, I cannot say such was all my own speech directly; I am not… but these things are the ripples of small drops in a pond, even if they mingle with others. And I hear of these lords who meet in my father's halls, and how they advise in favour of policies that make your knowledge and your work indispensable, and bring you wealth, and enact reforms that you've desired."

When she took a breath, it seemed to rattle in her chest. The soft grass and the trees seemed to stare back at her.

"That is what I think was the prize you sought… that you seek… in my company," Amarië finished, and this time she did look up, at Hyellindë's perfectly arched eyebrows and the gathering, evaluating, planning, plotting, lurking behind her eyes and the full bow of her lips.

The mask of one who wished her only the best, she could begin to slip off and peer behind, but not so for this woman she (foolishly, she supposed) had begun to think of as a friend. And did that not say something of how true a friend she was, Amarië wondered, before immediately chiding herself for such cynicism. Was it not lies and mistrust and thinking ill of one another that had rent their paradise in half…

Hyellindë had her head tilted just slightly to the side, and a look in her eyes that Amarië was tempted to read as regret, of all things. It felt right, but did not sound right. "You… appreciate my company, no? I seek your company for that reason, and the mirror of it," she said. A statement of truth. An emotional vulnerability. The start of a logical progression, of an argument to be made…

Amarië could feel her lip twisting, in concord with her thoughts, as Hyellindë stepped closer, taking her hand in the manner of a lord who would bend to kiss it in acknowledgement of station and loyalty.

"Whatever good fortune and favourable impressions others have obtained of me… I cannot see as more than coming from your honesty, and that from time you have thought well spent. And I likewise. There was a time when what good happened to our friends, we celebrated rather than mistrusted, or so I remember. Perhaps too nostalgically."

And there was a flicker of sadness then, before the kiss to follow up the taking in hand of Amarië's own fingers. It came softly, gracefully though, to the space below the hollow between her collarbones instead of the back of her knuckles. Hyellindë's dark curls fell forward from her shoulders as she bent her head, brushing against Amarië's breast.

It seemed only natural then, that Amarië bring her own hand up, to rest against the swell of russet skin above the neckline of Hyellindë's dress. She was not sure what it might have signified, if anything. (No, not if anything; assuredly something, but something whose precise nature slid away, elusive and hiding in a wreath of fog.)

The way Hyellindë raised her head then, it was slow and deliberate, with something evaluative  and weaving possibilities of the next few moments behind her eyes. She wondered, briefly, bizarrely, if Hyellindë had often, instead of her intentions, lied more about not fearing anything, even loss.

It did not seem so bizarre a thought though when Amarië could almost taste that fear coating her lips.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Host of the West masses its preparations for going to war in Beleriand, and the glow of paradise in Aman seems to begin fading once more.

"Disgusting," Hyellindë muttered, even as she buckled on her gilded vambraces. Her hair was tied back severely, pressed flat and tight against her skull and twisted into many small braids that formed a single large plait down her back. It was strange to see her, Amarië thought, without her rich silks, her adornment, with her face and eyes set hard rather than serene and shifting like a thin branch in the wind. Chest and collar hidden behind a glinting shirt of mail rather than bared and decorated dripping with jewels.

"What is?" asked Amarië, perhaps too belatedly. She found herself, it seemed ruefully, both distracted and desiring not to be so by the anxiety of actually marching out to war. Agreeing that it was the only proper choice to make, to stem the domination of the Enemy over all the Outer Lands… that was a different matter than actually marching herself. And she would not shirk off the responsibility to another, but nor did she rest easily now. 

Hyellindë's eyes glinted with a fiery light, that even now managed to unsettle her - moreso, Amarië supposed, that the gleam more resembled light reflecting off a blade to be driven into a heart, than any innocent source.

"That we, somehow, we manage to find ourselves suiting up to fight their war, to reign in their kinsman while bearing the brunt of his violence. Again."

The sentiment left her cold and did nothing to soothe the shaky feeling in her chest. Fëanorian heresies, most would have whispered, and cast baleful eyes at anyone who wished with such language - such outward language -to disturb the balance that had been remade in the centuries since their departure. But she had known, hadn't she?

"Why do you go to fight then, if you hold no love for the Valar's war?" Amarië murmured, eyes downcast.

Hyellindë cast her a searching, almost condescending look; one that made her wish to shrink inside her body and even more so for how long it had been since she recalled seeing it before. "Do you think I had never wished to see the Outer Lands?" she offered, a challenge.

She had the sense then, more strongly than previous times, that whatever undisturbed surface lay over their realm and their lives, it was thin and like to be easily shattered by some repetition of earlier events. As though the world were cyclic in its broad patterns, but shifting in details; changes in meanings of words beneath similar sounds along sequences of notes that flowed through multiple keys.

Why did you not go then?" she said suddenly. Tired, too tired of the uncertain quiets and the energy spilling out of her veins but trapped within her skin. Was it the question? No, no, she had not wished to go. Not for her own sake, at least, and when his back had turned and she saw no more glimpses of robes of green and gold and glowing smiles, the question had passed and she knew her choice was right. Curiosity and hunger and wide lands to rule, blood shining bright on the corner of an eye and the tip of a sword, these were not her things. (She felt so sure again, when this time there was no eye shining with blood and desire but instead a body not quite scrubbed clean of it, knitted together past scars and wounds, even newly formed as it was. Fëar pulled into bodies stained them irrevocably as they did so with the hurts they still bore, she decided.)

But when she looked up, as well as hard and sharp and guarded, something of Hyellindë's manner bore too a strange, raw, tear-glossy brittleness. Nothing Amarië could see in her body though, strange enough, and yet…

She pushed a huff from her nose and pressed her lips thinly together. "If I followed? I would still be tied to another, would I not?" Hyellindë said. The fingers of her right hand fluttered, even in the angular, decorated shape of the metal gauntlet. "No… When there are prices everywhere, you pick the one less onerous and swallow it and its bitterness washed down with what benefits you can fit down your throat as well."

When Amarië studied her face, she did not much look like the taste of bitter had been washed from her mouth.


End file.
